Re: Pilate and Josephus
Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2018 5:15 pm
Ben,
I know what you are saying. If it was just Josephus popping the name Decius Mundus in some usual historical place in his text, I wouldn't think of it as anything but a real historical reference to a real person of that name. But this passage is one that I am convinced is written as a cryptic allusion to NT events with figures he names as Paulina and Ida alluding to Paul and Iuda, so it inclines me to think that the same is true for the name of Decius Mundus.
As for the meaning, the Bible in both Testaments many times uses the idea of a tenth as a way of speaking of a tithe. Josephus also numerous times IIRC speaks of Rome as having conquered or spread over the world, even though I know that they hadn't conquered Persia. He says that Rome even tried to cross the Atlantic IIRC. Meanwhile, Paul's mission was to spread the gospel across Rome, if not the world of the gentiles. Just as Paulina in Section 4 refers to the allusion to Paul in Section 5, it looks reasonable to me to think that Decius Mundus refers to the tithing that the Pauline figure in Section 5 performs.
Another possibility I considered us that it refers to the concept that shows up repeatedly in the visionary or apocalyptic literature of the 1st or 2nd centuries that there were a number of a heavens, e.g. the "7th heaven". In some Jewish Christian thinking from at least the 6th century that I came across, these heavens are associated with the planets. To speak of the Tenth World brings to mind this idea, since in the epistles Paul says he knew someone who was taken up to the Tenth Heaven. Plus, in the Nag Hammadi literature, Paul rises to the Tenth Heaven:
http://theconversation.com/pauls-apocal ... over-40836
Gill's exposition of 2 Cor 12:2 interprets the third heaven as referring to a third world:
(( The apostle refers to a distinction among the Jews of , "the supreme heaven, the middle heaven, and the lower heaven" (f); and who also make a like division of worlds, and which they call , "the supreme world, and the middle world, and the lower world" (g); and sometimes (h) the world of angels, the world of the orbs, and the world of them below; and accordingly the Cabalistic doctors talk of three worlds; , "the third world", they say (i), is the supreme world, hidden, treasured, and shut up, which none can know; as it is written, "eye hath not seen", &c. and is the same with the apostle's "third heaven". ))
I know what you are saying. If it was just Josephus popping the name Decius Mundus in some usual historical place in his text, I wouldn't think of it as anything but a real historical reference to a real person of that name. But this passage is one that I am convinced is written as a cryptic allusion to NT events with figures he names as Paulina and Ida alluding to Paul and Iuda, so it inclines me to think that the same is true for the name of Decius Mundus.
As for the meaning, the Bible in both Testaments many times uses the idea of a tenth as a way of speaking of a tithe. Josephus also numerous times IIRC speaks of Rome as having conquered or spread over the world, even though I know that they hadn't conquered Persia. He says that Rome even tried to cross the Atlantic IIRC. Meanwhile, Paul's mission was to spread the gospel across Rome, if not the world of the gentiles. Just as Paulina in Section 4 refers to the allusion to Paul in Section 5, it looks reasonable to me to think that Decius Mundus refers to the tithing that the Pauline figure in Section 5 performs.
Another possibility I considered us that it refers to the concept that shows up repeatedly in the visionary or apocalyptic literature of the 1st or 2nd centuries that there were a number of a heavens, e.g. the "7th heaven". In some Jewish Christian thinking from at least the 6th century that I came across, these heavens are associated with the planets. To speak of the Tenth World brings to mind this idea, since in the epistles Paul says he knew someone who was taken up to the Tenth Heaven. Plus, in the Nag Hammadi literature, Paul rises to the Tenth Heaven:
http://theconversation.com/pauls-apocal ... over-40836
Gill's exposition of 2 Cor 12:2 interprets the third heaven as referring to a third world:
(( The apostle refers to a distinction among the Jews of , "the supreme heaven, the middle heaven, and the lower heaven" (f); and who also make a like division of worlds, and which they call , "the supreme world, and the middle world, and the lower world" (g); and sometimes (h) the world of angels, the world of the orbs, and the world of them below; and accordingly the Cabalistic doctors talk of three worlds; , "the third world", they say (i), is the supreme world, hidden, treasured, and shut up, which none can know; as it is written, "eye hath not seen", &c. and is the same with the apostle's "third heaven". ))